One of the main assignments for the applied theatre course requires that two groups of students work with facilitators on a devising process that could be used to create a community-engaged theatre project. Our facilitators, Declan Gorman and Jenny Macdonald, each take a group and spend about five days modeling their individual devising processes in a concentrated experience. It’s important to note that these processes usually occur over weeks or months, but because of the short duration of the course, Declan and Jenny find ways to telescope their processes so that students achieve strong results in an extraordinarily short period of time. It helps that these students are talented and game to be working in this fashion, but it’s still a superhuman undertaking.

The final week of the Ireland applied theatre course began on Monday with some input from Chrissie Poulter. Chrissie has served as an academic tutor and a devising facilitator for the program in years past, and after a three-year career break, she is back as a faculty member at Trinity College. She offered to share some of her thoughts about the longer history of applied theatre and community arts in Ireland, and I thought that her experience and expertise could provide valuable insights for students as they began to consider their final project for the course: a prospectus for an applied theatre project partnering with an organization in the United States.

We started with a trip to Victoria Square, a new, ultra modern, high-end shopping mall in Belfast. At the top of the mall stands a large, plexiglass dome offering a 360 view of the city. We took the lift to the top, had some input from our tour guide Jerry, and then Jonathan set the group to work on another collection of tasks.

The second day in and around Belfast featured a trip to the Giant’s Causeway, a UNESCO World Heritage site composed of 40,000 interlocking basalt columns that have been formed over 60 million years of volcanic and geological activity. It’s a scenic ride up the coast from Belfast to the causeway, and after the work that we’ve been doing in urban landscapes, it was fantastic to spend the day in a natural setting. We worried about the weather, but Mother Nature was kind to us with lots of sunshine.

On Tuesday evening Jonathan Harden joined the team in Dublin to provide an orientation to Northern Ireland and Belfast. Jonathan has taught on the applied theatre course since 2008, and this year he once again curated our experience in Northern Ireland. In his session Jonathan asked students to share what they felt they knew about Belfast and Northern Ireland and what questions they had. He shared some of his own thoughts, perceptions and experiences, but emphasized that this was only one story.